Retail & Consumer
Speed is crucial in the consumer goods space. Big Data helps companies be more responsive to rapidly-changing trends, allowing market players to increase revenue and reduce wasted expenditure.

Big Data Ecommerce Outfit Qubit Scoops Up $26m in Series B – Now Looks to Expand Outreach and Product Development
Ecommerce analytics startup Qubit has secured $26 million in Series B funding on Monday, with Accel Partners leading the round. Original investors Salesforce Ventures and Balderton Capital, also participated. The funding will be used to expand Qubit’s US and European operations and development of the ongoing product innovation pipeline. Qubit

Data Breach in the U.S. Continues as Latest victim, Jimmy John’s, Confirms Card Info Theft
U.S. sandwich restaurant chain Jimmy John’s reported last week of a possible theft of its customers’ credit and debit card information at 216 of its stores and franchised locations. “The credit and debit card information at issue may include the card number and in some cases the cardholder’s name, verification

Intelligent Ecommerce Startup Ometria Secures $500k, Plans to Give Small Retailers a Data-Driven Advantage
Ometria, an outfit providing software solutions to drive profitable e-commerce, has bagged $500k in seed funding, after the $1.5 million seed round in March this year. This round saw participation from 17 new investors including James Bromley, COO at Swiftkey, Andreas Andreou, commercial director at Quidco, Alicia Navarro and Joe

Netflix and its Revolutionary Use of Big Data
When Netflix forayed into original programming by committing $100 million for two seasons of House of Cards, it did so without even watching the pilot. What made Netflix so confident that it thought this decision was a no-brainer? Big Data! Netflix is, at its core, a data-driven company that diligently

Amazon: See How Big Data Can Drive Business Success
Amazon is a big data giant, which is why I want to look at the company in my second post of my series on how specific organisations use big data. We all know that Amazon pioneered e-commerce in many ways, but possibly one of its greatest innovations was the personalized

Telecom Giant Verizon shells out $7.4m to Settle Consumer Privacy Investigation
In what the US Federal Communications Commission has termed as an “unacceptable” usage of personal consumer information for marketing purposes, telecom giant, Verizon Communications has agreed to pay a fine of $7.4 million to the US Treasury. Travis LeBlanc, Acting Chief of the FCC’s Enforcement Bureau said in a statement,

IBM’s Watson Focuses on Fashion Trends to Help Customers Decide What to Wear
In a bid to reach out to more retail companies, IBM’s cognitive computing platform Watson might be utilised to fabricate ‘fashion’ apps that overlay structured and unstructured data to help people decide what to wear. While at the Melbourne Spring Fashion Week, IBM Watson’s global retail transformation leader Keith Mercier spoke

US Law Enforcement Scrutinize Possible Credit Card Data Breach at Home Depot
American retail giant Home Depot maybe the latest company to fall victim to a massive online data breach. Initial reports surfaced on cybersecurity journalist Brian Krebs’ website, about a new batch of stolen credit and debit cards that went on sale in the cybercrime underground on Tuesday morning. Various banks

Improving the Steam Recommender System, Emptying Your Wallet
We recently caught up with Kevin Wong, a business intelligence professional and machine learning enthusiast, to talk about his latest project: Building a better recommender system for Steam. For anyone who isn’t familiar, Steam is a digital distribution platform for games, developed by Valve Corporation. It boasts over 75 million

Real Life Analytics Will Identify Shoppers in Less than a Second
The futuristic idea of shops knowing your age, gender and race when you walk into a store and targeting products accordingly is becoming a reality. Real Life Analytics, a MassChallenge startup based out of Boston, have developed computer vision software which can determine your demographic profile within 20 milliseconds of